The present invention relates to plasma generators, and more particularly to systems having a resonant cavity for generating a plasma therein.
In recent years, microwave technology has been applied to generate various types of plasma. In some applications, igniting and sustaining plasma requires a high power microwave generator. The existing microwave techniques are not suitable, or at best, highly inefficient due to one or more of the following drawbacks. First, the existing systems lack proper scalability, where scalability refers to the ability of a system to handle varying amounts of microwave input power in a graceful manner or its ability to be enlarged/reduced to accommodate the variation of the input power. For instance, the required microwave input power may vary depending on the types, pressure, and flow rates of the gas to be converted into plasma. Second, the economics of scale for a magnetron increases rapidly as the output power increases. For instance, the price of a 10 KW magnetron is much higher than the price of ten 1 KW magnetrons. Thus, there is a need for a plasma generating system that has high scalability and is cheaper than currently available plasma generating systems without compromising the output power.